Stalin in One Weekend
Imagine, reader, the view that lucky stars enjoy as young worlds orbit, rich with life. The star catches brief glimpses as its children spin, of living oceans, lichen jungles spreading new dirt across still-cooling rock, and the first sentiences raising curious eyes to their bright parent. Such a view Martin Guildbreaker shared, seated in the main hall of the Utopian Transit Network as its technicians circled from computer to computer, their coats showing birdman cities, giant mushroom forests, seas of dark ghosts, anthropomorphized animals striding in armor through medieval castles, and a dozen other teeming worlds. Their creatures circled too: a fat, snoozing Techupine bristling with detachable tools, a Gilded Owl, a rambunctious two-headed dragon, Crystal Bats transparent as glassfish, and a rainbow cloud of Hummerlights, glowing hummingbirds as colorful as orchids, which schooled around the room like minnows in fast-forward. Did Martin ask himself, I wonder, as suns must: How long until these wonders launch to the heavens on their self-made wings, and do not need me anymore?
“Guildbreaker, the set-set you hired just attempted murder!”
“What?” Martin rose at once, too slow to intervene as the Utopians seized the set-set who sprawled on the floor at Martin’s feet and ripped the wires from their mesh of sensors. The set-set screamed. The Major once described to me a time he saw a man struck blind and deaf by a blow from a flying rock. He told me he had never heard so pitiful a scream, the soldier, still a boy, shaking more from terror than from pain, floundering helpless in a silent, death-black world with two of five senses lost; imagine then the set-set’s scream losing forty of forty-five.
“What are you doing?” Martin reached out a strong hand to the set-set, who latched on like a drowning man.
“They tried to make a car crash.” It was Aldrin who answered, seated on her unicorn whose panther-black skin merged with her coat of deep space to stream night and stars around the rider.
<what? i did no such thing!> the set-set protested, wiping tears of shock. For legal reasons the name of this set-set must remain confidential, not that many would care which of this race of bonsai brains had answered Martin’s call.
“That was live data!” Aldrin shouted. “Can’t you tell the difference?”
<live data?> The blinded set-set’s fingers trembled as they dug into Martin’s arm.
“You just tried to delete a data point from the set you were viewing.”
<i wanted to see what impact it would have. i was going to put it back later.>
“Put it back? That data point was a fifty-nine-year-old Cousin named Harper Morrero. If we hadn’t parried, they’d be dead now.”
The set-set’s breath raced, enough to make their tracker bleep concern. <dead? a person? wait, what is this data?>
Aldrin’s fists clenched her unicorn’s ink-black mane. “You didn’t tell the set-set what data they’re sifting?”
Martin gave the set-set’s shoulders a comforting squeeze. “They didn’t need to know. They said they’d work better if they didn’t.”
<ten billion points,> the set-set typed faster than speech, <ten billon people, that’s the whole world. is this the tracker system? have I been hooked to the tracker computers without knowing it?>
Martin sighed at Aldrin. “Why did you give them access to live data? I told you to show them old records, not—”
“They asked for it,” Aldrin interrupted.
<wait, you said a car crash. the transit network! this is the transit network, isn’t it? not the trackers. cars! am i in cielo de pajaros? where are sidney and eureka?>
“Why did you try to kill that person?” Aldrin pressed. “What fallout did you prophesy?”
The set-set’s breath raced. <i didn’t mean to hurt anyone! attempted murder? am i going to prison now? i didn’t know those data points were people! i’m not a murderer!>
“It’s all right,” Martin consoled. “We know you didn’t know. I called you in here, you won’t be held responsible. You had no way to know.”
<then all the points i found that were deleted, those were people too? murders!>
The Masonic iron of Martin’s face softened for a moment. “Just remember, it’s not your fault. I didn’t tell you what we were investigating. You aren’t responsible for what’s going to happen when we release this information, I am. I could have hired anyone. None of this was you.”
<release? you can’t release this! it’ll cause worldwide panic!>
“They’ll just keep killing if we don’t.”
<you don’t understand.>
“How many did you find?”
<what?>
“I had you look for deaths—deletions—that had a large global impact, and which only a Cartesian set-set would know how to predict. How many did you find?”
<maybe it’s not true. this is new data to me. where are sidney and eureka? sidney koons and eureka weeksbooth, they work on the transit network, they’re the ones you want! ask them!>
“You knew Sidney and Eureka well, didn’t you?” Martin asked softly. “You were sort of ba’sibs?”
<of course. with the cousins and lorelei cook sabotaging set-set training, there’s only one place left that trains cartesians. you must’ve read the black sakura seven-ten list article about it.>
How could Martin not wince? The whole world had read by now, not only Masami Mitsubishi’s original editorial about Romanovan Senator and Minister of Education Lorelei “Cookie” Cook, but the follow-up articles, penned by quick-striking journalists ever poised like mantises in search of prey: the nighttime raids which, increasingly of late, had been ripping infant set-sets from their pod-beds, smashing their computers, burning their bash’houses down, was this more than the sleeping dragon Nurturism releasing a scorching snore? Was this Nurturist surge deliberate? Traceable to Lorelei Cook, and through the Cousins’ most prominent Senator to the Cousins themselves? Perhaps this sigh from Martin wishes for a world where that had been the largest crisis.
<where are sidney and eureka? they must be here.>
“This isn’t the Six-Hive Transit Network,” Aldrin answered, cold. “It’s ours.”
Fresh fear spurred the set-set to finally lift the blinded interface hood from their eyes and look. The walls were the computer, a forest of rod-thin processors glittering within columns of sparkling coolant.
<the utopian network. then you watched? you saw everything i found. you utopians, you’re the ones trying to expose this, aren’t you? the world goes down and you suck up the profits like parasites and shoot them into space!> They dug their fingers into Martin’s sleeve. <don’t let them use you like this, mason! the utopians know the truth already, but they want the announcement to come from you instead of them, so no one will realize it was their plan. when the saneer-weeksbooth bash’ is arrested, they’ll control all global transit, just in time to exploit the chaos!>
“It isn’t the Utopians.”
<of course it is! who else wouldn’t care about the consequences of exposing this?>
“I don’t care,” answered a new voice, tired and cracking as it rose from the depths of a thick grove of computers. “I’m not allowed to. Law and only law, that’s my job.”
<who’s that? who’s there?>
“Police Commissioner General Ektor Carlyle Papadelias.” Papa strolled forward, flexing their work-stiffened shoulders, slim and ancient like a cliff-face tree that keeps its trunk pole-thin as it puts the growing strength of centuries into its roots. “The Mason and the Utopians are both working for me on this one, me and Romanova, and so are you. Now, start from the beginning and tell me what you found. Everything.”